Abstract

The opening pathways of the French philosophy of technology derive from the works of Descartes, Bergson, Bachelard, Leroi-Gourhan, Canguilhem and Simondon. The concept of the Homo Faber is central from Bergson to Simondon, since tools and machines as information and energy resources constitute the principal theoretical problems that lead to a philosophy of technical mentality through the stages of anthropological evolution. Canguilhem, influenced by Bergson, theorised the genesis of intelligence and science by the needs of action from their earlier phases. He avowed at the same time that the intellectual mode of knowledge is not the only possible and primary one, following Bergson in the interpretation of technique as a phenomenon of life. The emergence of a French Philosophy of Technology is, moreover, an outcome of the works of Jacques Lafitte, Louis Couffignal, Pierre Ducassé, Jaques Ellul, Marie‐Dominique Chenu, Emmanuel Mounier, Jean Brun, Bernard Charbonneau, Michel Foucault, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, François Russo, François Dagognet, Jean-Claude Beaune, Jacques Viénot, Etienne Souriau, Georges Friedmann, Bernard Stiegler, Jean-Pierre Séris, Pierre Lévy and others.